


Ye Merry Mechs of Cybertron

by playswithworms



Series: Protectobot Beginnings [20]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2013-10-28
Packaged: 2017-12-30 16:57:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playswithworms/pseuds/playswithworms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes those he helped caught a brief shimmer of air, as though a messenger of Primus had passed by...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ye Merry Mechs of Cybertron

**Author's Note:**

> First published on LJ February 2009, giftfic for rageai. Hinted at Mirage and Jazz backstory here are inspired by her marvelous "Noblesse Oblige" ([Noblesse Oblige ffnet link](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4237521/1/Noblesse-Oblige))

_“Ah Father, oh Father, no longer can I_

_feast, while others go empty and die.”_

Streetwise lifted his head dramatically as he sang, meeting Groove’s optics for a moment with a pleading expression in his role as the generous noblemech. He had the accent down perfectly, Groove thought to himself. He sounded just like Mirage. 

_“My creation, my child, you have torn out my spark_

_Leave then, go quickly to the pain and the dark.”_

Groove tried to adopt a properly sparkbroken expression as he sang the part of the noble father, but it was hard, trying to sing in the voice of a High Towers mech and not giggle when he looked at Streetwise. Usually they tried not to enjoy themselves too obviously, doing things like inventory, or cleaning the washracks, or, as they were doing now, checking the seals on two hundred replacement coolant tank valves. It made other mechs look at them funny, and Ratchet was always threatening to scan their processors. The box of valves was very old, and most of the units were not usable, but one here and there was still good, and parts were scarce.  It wasn’t very exciting, but it was necessary, and he and Streetwise were together, so why shouldn’t they have fun?  And it wasn’t like anyone else was around right now, so they could be as silly and strange as they liked.

They sang the narration together, voices twining, as the wealthy noblemech gathered his riches in a woven platinum sack and left his creator and home forever, to wander the slums of Cybertron. Streetwise inspected another coolant valve closely, and the noblemech visited the broken, the hopeless and sick and left gifts at their door – sometimes a single jewel, sometimes a cube of rare vintage high grade or a stack of credits – never seen, although sometimes those he helped caught a brief shimmer of air, “as though a messenger of Primus passed by” they sang, voices dancing, Streetwise singing high and Groove singing low. 

They were reaching the bottom of the box of valves by the time the noblemech exhausted his riches, often going low on energon himself as he snuck into the homes of the greedy or cruel, “invisible as thought, silent as starlight,” taking from the rich and giving to the poor, and the polished shine of his fancy armor grew scuffed and dull.

“Thank you kind sir, whoever you be, Primus’ blessing upon you and all that you see,” Groove sang, and the once-wealthy noblemech grew ill and was rescued and tended by one of the poor mechs he had helped long ago (“He should have taken a little time to get his anti-virals updated,” First Aid always said at this part, “even if he was terribly busy.”)

Groove realized suddenly that he was singing alone, and looked over at Streetwise in confusion.

“There’s someone in here,” Streetwise whispered, sounding more excited than alarmed, his optics darting around the room.

“What? I don’t see….” Groove’s voice trailed off as Mirage shimmered into existence next to the stacks of salvaged medical supplies. 

“Very good, Streetwise,” Mirage said, voice rising and falling in that haughty way he had, and Groove was reminded of when they first met Mirage and had wondered why he disliked them so much. It had been First Aid who had figured it out first. “It’s not that he doesn’t like us; it just sounds that way. That’s just how he talks, but if you listen to what he says instead of how he says it, he’s really very nice.” 

First Aid had been right, and Mirage, when he found out that First Aid still had trouble writing his glyphs backwards, had spent countless joors helping him to do it properly, and teaching them all to draw the glyphs with soft wire brushes dipped in paint instead of markers. “Barbaric,” Mirage had muttered, now and again, as he traced out another elegant swirl for them to copy. “Didn’t Wheeljack teach you anything?” 

“Now, younglings, if you would be so kind as to tell me, where, in the name of all Cybertron, did you learn that song?” Mirage demanded, golden optics glinting with…something, amusement or horror, or something in between, Groove couldn’t quite decide. 

“The Ballad of the Generous Noblemech?” Streetwise asked rhetorically. “Jazz taught it to First Aid, back when he first came, when he was stuck in the medbay all that time, and First Aid taught it to us.”  Despite his name, Jazz sang worse than Hot Spot even, but he liked to hear the Protectobots singing, and sometimes asked them to try out a part of a song he was writing, or one he was trying to recover from datatracks that had been corrupted. 

“I see,” Mirage nodded, the refined features of his face still alternating in that strange mix of amusement and horror. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go strangle someone. Please, carry on,” and Mirage shimmered out of existence once again. 

“I hope I didn’t upset him, singing the noblemech parts like how he talks,” Streetwise said, cautiously quiet, once they were reasonably sure they were alone again.

Groove shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he reassured his brother. “He didn’t seem mad, not at us anyway. He thought it was funny too, that time in the rec room when you were talking like Ironhide and Ratchet.” Mirage had been cracking up with the rest of them, to the point where he was sliding out of his chair, as Groove recalled, when Streetwise had told the all mechs in the rec room to “get the slag out of my medbay” in Ratchet’s very voice.

“Do you think he’s really going to strangle Jazz?” Streetwise wondered, tapping his comm. idly with one finger as if considering giving Jazz a heads up. He liked Jazz. He didn’t want him to get strangled. 

“No, I think he was probably kidding,” Groove told him, although he was not entirely certain himself. Everyone liked Jazz, but Mirage for some reason seemed to avoid him most of the time. Maybe it had to do with whatever Jazz had been doing before. Before he had appeared one day in the medbay, held together with nothing more than patch welds and determination, with a different paint job and yelling strange things when he came out of recharge, and First Aid could see the faint marks of the Decepticon insignia where it had been sanded off. That hadn’t been a surprise to them, although it should have been. That was Streetwise’s fault.

It worried Hot Spot, all the things that Streetwise knew that he wasn’t supposed to know, things that inevitably they all knew, through the gestalt bond, although they all tried their best not to know that they knew them. There was not much to be done about it, however. It was not as if Streetwise set out to uncover top secret information on purpose. He just…noticed everything, and suddenly the clues would connect, and anyway asking Streetwise not to find things out would be like asking First Aid not to fix someone that was damaged. So they knew and they were silent, and they tried not to squirm with guilt every time Prowl walked by. 

Jazz would certainly be able to hold his own, even if Mirage did try to strangle him, Groove thought, and maybe Mirage meant “strangle” in a nice way. The way that you could sometimes say something not-nice but have it mean something else. The Aerialbots did it all the time, but he and his brothers had never quite gotten the hang of it. 

“Streets?” 

“Yeah, Groove?” Streetwise answered, as he shoved all of the rejected valves into a neater pile.

“I really want to strangle you.”

Streetwise blinked at him a moment.

“I want to strangle you, too,” Streetwise replied solemnly. 

Groove tilted his head. “Nope, I just don’t get it,” he sighed and Streetwise laughed. 

“I’ll say. Don’t worry bro, I’m sure it’ll all make sense someday. Last verse?” 

The generous noblemech pledged his love to his humble rescuer, as they put the good valves in a smaller box and labeled it with Mirage’s graceful calligraphy, and then they started on the next container of medical supplies. Tubes of circuit paste and welding gel, and Groove smiled as he sang. Now these looked like  _fun!_  


End file.
